How bad was the Dallas Cowboys run-defense and did it improve?

The Dallas Cowboys are somewhat notorious for their poor run defense. Fair or not, their reputation against land attacks precedes them and after losing their top run-stuffer, Brent Urban, this offseason, that rep isn’t leaving them anytime soon.

Everyone knows reputation is one thing but reality is something completely different. Just because people feel the Dallas Cowboys are poor against the run, doesn’t mean they actually are. As we’ll see today, even raw numbers can be misleading and a more context-driven approach is needed to get a truthful picture of how the Cowboys faired against the run.

The Dallas Cowboys run defense isn’t as bad as many are making it out to be.

Based on how the season ended, it’s easy to see why many cite their run defense an Achilles heel. Against San Francisco, Dallas gave up 169 yards on the ground, their most since Week 9 against Denver. San Fran moved the ball to a tune of 4.45 yards/carry and only needed a paltry 172 yards through the air to send the Dallas Cowboys packing.

The upset loss in the playoffs was bad, but by no means an outlier for the Cowboys defense. Over the course of the season, the Cowboys gave up an average of 4.5 yards per carry.

The reason the 49ers were so successful in total yards was more because of volume (and the lack of faith in Jimmy G) than rushing dominance. And the overall 2.43 expected points yielded, were far from insurmountable. If it hadn’t been for the Cowboys’ pathetic showing on offense (which was -5.37 expected points added), it would have been an easy hill to climb.

The volume numbers everyone seems to point to is total yards against and yards/carry against. According to teamrankings.com, the Cowboys ranked 20th and 23rd respectively in those two popular categories. But like we showed in the San Fran example above, those two categories can be awfully misleading.

Using expected points added (EPA) we can look at the actual impact of a play against. If the opponent rushes for six-yards on 3rd-and-10, it looks bad for the defense using traditional stats (like yards/carry). But in reality, it was a stop, therefore a win for the defense and is reflected as such in EPA and success rate.

That’s because EPA and its partner, success rate, use context to appraise the value of a play. If the play didn’t help the scoring probability, it won’t reward the offensive team with a positive score.

So how does EPA and success rate measure the play of the Dallas Cowboys run defense?

Adjusting the win probability to within 20-80 percent (removing blow-out situations), the Dallas Cowboys only gave up an EPA average of -.063 (15th in the NFL) and a success rate of 40.3% against (17th). That shows the Cowboys run-defense won much more often than they lost and had net win in rushing EPA against.

Even if we include that blowout garbage time, ESPN’s Next Gen Stats show the Dallas Cowboys have a 31 percent run-stop win rate, which ranks them 14th in the NFL. All of this indicates they aren’t quite the dumpster fire many are making them out to be. They’re really just average.

While the loss of run-stopping extraordinaire, Brent Urban, certainly hurts, his impact wasn’t a significant one last season. Urban only played in six games with Dallas last year which only amounted to 161 snaps. Considering DeMarcus Lawrence, Dallas’ best run-stopping end, only played seven games himself, Dallas should actually improve with D-Law playing full time in 2022.

Someone else making his way back in 2022 is Neville Gallimore. Gallimore, the favorite to start inside next to Osa Odighizuwa, should provide better play in all areas this season. He only played in five games in 2022 and should easily take the starting job back from Carlos Watkins, who was re-signed to offer rotational depth.

The Dallas Cowboys also added John Ridgeway in the NFL draft. While run-stopping DTs rarely make a big impact as rookies, Ridgeway has the potential to defy the odds and work himself into the new rotation.

The Dallas Cowboys aren’t a great run-stopping team. They aren’t even good.  But the numbers show they are average and the personnel in 2022 should move that needle upward.

Would it be nice to be an elite run-stopping team?

Sure. But in order of importance, they should only worry about run defense after the passing offense, passing defense, and rushing offense are elite. Otherwise, average is perfectly fine because aside from special teams, it’s statistically the least important element of the game. And if it wasn’t for the offense cratering last season, it would have been perfectly fine in 2021 as well.